Monday, 30 January 2017

Jesson Lesson

I’ve been nibbling away at one of my many brick walls, and felt that it was time
to write something up. People performing pre-civil registration research in
England and Wales will easily relate to the problems I describe here. Although
solid progress was made, there are still parts for which I feel that I may be painting a story rather than uncovering
one — you be the judge.

The research relates to my Jesson line during the early 19th
Century, and in particular to Thomas Jesson, the grandfather of the Mary Jesson
researched in
A
Rich French Actor; one of my g-g-g-g grandfathers.

My friend Peter Lucas has been conducting a One-Name Study (ONS)
on the Jessons for many years (see http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/jessonfamily).
We have pooled our knowledge on several occasions, but we both knew that there was
something missing in relation to Thomas.

The Problem

Thomas was born around 1792 in Sapcote, a small village
about 10 miles SW of Leicester. He was baptised on 14 Apr 1792 to a Thomas and
Rebecca Jesson at Sapcote All Saints.[1]
His mother was Rebecca Gent, and his parents were married in the same parish
during 1790.[2] Thomas
married a Mary Bentley on 11 Mar 1822,[3]
and they had two sons: William (b. c1822)[4]
and James (b. c1824)[5]; in both
baptism registrations the “Quality, Trade or Profession” column reads “Frame
knitters” — the plural indicating that this applied to both parents. The trail then
goes cold for a long time.

There was now a problem because his wife was named Rebecca
(not Mary), and there was no sign of William.

The 1851 census confirmed that James (the eventual father of
the Mary mentioned in my pervious article) and Thomas were both from Sapcote,
and were both framework knitters. There were no alternative identifications possible,
given their combined details, but where was William, and who was Rebecca?

There was no obvious death registration for the son,
William. Also, there was no preceding marriage visible for Thomas and Rebecca,
and no obvious death registration for Mary. So was Rebecca a new wife or a
pseudonym for the same one (Mary)?

Thomas died on 8 Jul 1855, aged 64, of dropsy [abnormal
accumulation of fluid beneath the skin and in the cavities of the body] at
Castle Court, Howard Street. His occupation was “Stocking framework knitter”,
and the informant was Ann Herod of nearby Milk Square, who was present at the
death.[10]
To make things worse, I could see no subsequent death or remarriage for his
Rebecca.

This is the sort of problem you leave until a (very long)
rainy day.

Rebecca Jesson

Well, that rainy day arrived — we get a lot of them here —
and it began with finding when Rebecca died. Although she did not show up in
the civil registration index, she did show up in the burial register of
Nottingham’s privately-run General Cemetery,
along with her husband, Thomas.

By that time, civil registration of deaths was well-established,
so where was Rebecca? The dates from the burial register eventually allowed me
to identify her GRO index entry as “Rebecca Lesson” (as in my title),[12]
and this was how it was recorded in the original index (i.e. not a subsequent transcription
error). Interestingly, the new GRO index of civil registrations[13]
has the same error, and this suggests that the original registration had some
horrible error.

Carrington was a hamlet about 1.5 miles north of the town
centre. As well as showing that their marriage occurred some time after they
were living under the same surname (see 1841 census, Table
1),
and not in any church, this notice is interesting because it referred to
Rebecca as “Mrs”. If she was a widow then it is very likely that Thomas was
also widower, and that his first marriage had ended. His son by that marriage,
James, married Keziah Chandler only the following year, in 1846.[15]

In many cases of a deferred second marriage, it was because
the participants in the first marriage had simply separated, and they had to
wait for a period of seven years to elapse with no contact before legally
remarrying. However, this option wasn’t available until the offence of bigamy in England & Wales was
redefined in section 57
of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 — it didn’t apply in this instance,
and so the first wife of Thomas (Mary) must have died.

The marriage certificate for Thomas and Rebecca confirmed
that she was a widow, and that her father, John Quaile, was a frame-smith. One
of the witnesses was the Keziah Chandler that Thomas’s son (James) would soon
marry; the other being a Jeremiah Butler.[16] It
was then possible to show that Rebecca had previously married a Thomas Burdett
while still living in Hinckley, in 1818.[17]

Hinckley (the birthplace and marriage-place of Rebecca) was
a village only 5 miles to the west of Sapcote. Not only was it associated with
framework knitters, it is reputed to have been the first location where textile
employees started destroying the machines that were taking their jobs — actions
that were later to become the Luddite
movement during 1811–1816. Their common origin and widowed status would easily
explain how they met, but Thomas’s younger sister, Maria (see below), was
baptised in Hinckley so their families must have known of each other.

Loughborough

In order to locate candidate deaths, I used the National
Burial Index (NBI)[18].
This provides a comprehensive list of known burials in England and Wales, and
it allows searches by birth date when a burial date is unknown.

Searching for “W* Jesson”, born 1822±1, there was only one
candidate showed up in the whole database: Wm Jesson, buried 12 Jul 1835 at
Loughborough All Saints parish, Leicestershire. Loughborough is a small town about
20 miles north of Sapcote, and was well-established in the domestic knitting
industry that this Jesson family worked in.[19]

Mary is a very strong candidate for Thomas’s first wife
because of her age, but could Henry and Maria have been twins belonging to the
same family; it would have been a tragedy indeed to have so many losses in just
18 months. Could an infectious disease have ravaged the family?

The death of William was reported in the newspapers, and
confirmed that the father was a Thomas Jesson.

So could the parish registers shed any further light on
these deaths? Mary’s entry confirmed that she was the wife of a Thos. [Thomas]
Jesson,[22]
and presumably the same one as William’s father.

As expected, William’s entry confirmed his father as a
Thomas Jesson,[23] but it didn’t
mention any mother; with other entries involving children, the register
indicated “son/daughter of father & mother”. This strongly suggested that
Thomas was widowed, and so was the same Thomas as the husband of Mary in the
earlier entry — remember that we are dealing with only four Jesson deaths in
this parish.

Both of the entries for Henry and Maria similarly identified
the father as Thomas, and with no mother.[24]
Thomas had a younger sister named Maria,[25]
so Henry might have been named after a relative of Mary’s.

Part of this deduction rests on there being just one Jesson
family in Loughborough at that time. Findmypast’s Leicestershire databases
confirmed that there were only these four Jesson burials in Loughborough
between 1805 and the end of that century. The situation was similar with
baptisms, where there was just one in 1844, and with marriages, where there was
one in 1828 and one in 1848, but we’ll come back to these in a later section.

The following vital-event yearly data for the associated Leicestershire hundreds
illustrates how small these communities were.

This was a very poor, and much-abused, profession; labour
costs were deliberately kept low as the masters could easily employ new labour.
The knitters toiled 16–18 hours a day, and had to pay for their own yarn,
replacement needles, and the rent on their frames — irrespective of whether
they were using them. Worse still, they were paid by the article rather than by
the yard. Living on the bread-line,
in near poverty, it is hardly surprising that the Luddites reacted, as they
did, to mechanisation taking away their work and making their plight all the
worse.

Around the time that Thomas may have moved to Loughborough,
1833, framework knitters were petitioning the government for controls to
protect their livelihood, including a minimum wage.

Lord R. [Robert] MANNERS
presented a petition from the framework-knitters of Loughborough, complaining
of distress.

Mr. GILLON presented a petition
complaining of distress from the linen weavers of Forfar, and praying for a law
providing that henceforth the linen weavers might be paid by the yard for their
work. If something were not done on the subject he should, next session, call
attention to it. -- Petition referred to the committee on manufacturers.[27]

Nothing came of this, and a subsequent petition in 1843
additionally made mention of the bad practices they were subjected to.[28]
Eventually, a Royal Commission enquired into the conditions of framework
knitters in 1845.

The following article appeared just the month after that
first petition, and nicely summed up the mood in Loughborough.

On Monday [26 Aug 1833] evening,
a meeting of persons engaged in the lace trade was held at Loughborough, and
they agreed to subscribe in aid of the fund to prevent the exportation of
machinery.

A notice has been issued by the
framework-knitters' committee at Loughborough, stating that all persons found
begging in the name of the "knotted branch of framework-knitters,"
are imposters [sic], that branch
having a dependency of their own, and caution the public not to relieve any
one.

The jurneymen [sic] lace hands of Loughborough have
formed a union for the purpose of supporting each other when out of work. A
great many have come forward, and in the course of a fortnight it is expected
they will all join.[29]

The “knotted branch” appears to have been a sick society: a sort of friendly society
where a group of people
shared a percentage of their earnings to ensure their mutual welfare in cases
of sickness or unemployment.[30]
This particular one was Leicestershire-based and was mentioned in the
newspapers as early as 1825, but there were others around the country, and
related to several professions.

The way these societies also controlled their combined
labour paints them as prototype trade unions, which were technically illegal at
that time; it wouldn’t be until the Trade Union Act 1871
that unions would be legalised. For instance, "...a great number of
workmen in the Silk Knotted Branch still continue out of employ, in consequence
of refusing to work at an abatement of sixpence per pair. They hold out
principally because of the very high price of provisions, and every other
necessary of life”,[31]
and “The journeymen belonging to the Silk Knotted Branch in Nottingham,
Mansfield, and Ilkeston, still continue out, in consequence of the hosiers not
complying with what the hands think a just and reasonable request”.[32]

Interestingly, poor law unions only
came about the year after the above Loughborough article as a result of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. Before
that time, individual parishes had to administer poor relief rather than through
unions of parishes.

Potential Conflicts

The presence of so few Jesson events in Loughborough should
make it easier to identify relationships; however, there were a small number of
other references that required explanation. None of these were in the same
decade as the four burials, but they were in neighbouring decades and so it was
necessary to establish whether they were related, and whether there might have
been more than one Thomas Jesson. The following table enumerates a range references
derived from various Ancestry vital-event
databases (not images) on 26 Jan 2017.

Name

Date

Details

Harriet Jesson

25 Jul 1807

Baptised in Loughborough All Saints.[a]

12 Feb 1828

Married John Plowright at Loughborough All Saints.[b]

Abraham Jesson

1840

Civil death registration in Loughborough district.[c]

Maria Jesson-i

17 Jun 1844

Baptised to George and Sarah at Loughborough All Saints.[d]

Maria Jesson-ii

5 Dec 1848

Married Thomas Smith at Loughborough All Saints.[e]

Phoebe Jesson

19 Jan 1846

Baptised at Loughborough Emmanuel (not All Saints) to
Samuel and Sarah.[f]

Harriet’s baptismal surname is transcribed as “Jepson” on
Findmypast, but the image confirms her as “a bastard of Ann Jesson”.[33]
On her marriage entry, the witnesses were Mary Jesson and Thos. Linaker.
Harriet signed her surname as “Geson”, but Mary signed correctly.[34]
There’s no further sign of Ann in this parish. The Mary could have been the one
who died in 1834, and that would suggest a connection between Ann and Thomas,
but I didn’t manage to prove to disprove this.

Abraham was 90 years old, and buried on 10 Mar 1840 in the
parish of Whitwick, St John the Baptist, about 7.5 miles west of Loughborough.
Ann was also 90 years old, and buried 3 Jul 1849 in the same parish.[35] Hence,
neither was associated with the Loughborough All Saints parish. Oddly, Whitwick
St John is in the registration district of Ashby de la Zouch rather than
Loughborough. The answer is that their abodes were both given as Grace Dieu, famous for its
priory, which is an extra-parochial tract included in the Belton parish
for statistical and civil registration purposes; Belton does fall within
the Loughborough district.

The younger Maria-i was baptised to George and Sarah Jesson,
residing on the Nottingham Road. George was a butcher.[36]
When
the older Maria-ii married Thomas Smith, she was also living on the Nottingham
Road. Although her father was also a Thomas Jesson, he was a publican rather
than a framework knitter. Witnesses were a James and Mary Twain.[37]
The fact they were living on the same road strongly suggests that these Marias
were related.

Phoebe was baptised at 40 years old. Findmypast records her
name as “Phobe Jepson” (rather than “Phoebe Jesson”, as on Ancestry) and in
this case the image confirms this to be correct; the surname clearly contains a
“ps” rather than a long-s,
and can be contrasted with the subsequent entry, for “Wesson”, which does show
a long-s.[38] Hence, Phobe/Phoebe
is a red herring.

Jane (a “minor”) married William Norman Bramley junior on 24
Oct 1848 in the parish of Sheepshed (now spelled Shepshed),[39]
about 5 miles west of Loughborough. She is not associated with Loughborough All
Saints.

So, we have two Marias to check further, one of whom had a
father named Thomas Jesson. Looking at the 1841 and 1851 censuses, we find them
both in the same family. The older Maria-ii being the daughter of Thomas and
Dorothy, and the younger Maria-i being the daughter of George (son of Thomas
and Dorothy) and Sarah.

A scan for all the Leicestershire baptisms for a Thomas and
Dorothy confirmed the above relationships — although no baptism could be found
for the older Maria-ii — and revealed that all the children were baptised in
Long Clawson, about 14 miles east of Loughborough, contrary to the 1851 census
information for George, but matching the birthplace of their mother, Dorothy.
Also, it revealed that Walter was probably baptised Arthur, and this would
explain why there was no subsequent mention of Arthur and no baptism for
Walter. These conclusions were also in broad agreement with Peter Lucas’s ONS
(p.F4).

Hence, this Thomas Jesson was not present in Loughborough before
1835. He clearly could not have been the husband of Mary, and the burial
entries for William, Henry, and Maria (Table 5)
indicated that their father was a widower.

There were no other Jesson vital events recorded in
Loughborough during the 1830s decade, other than the four burials, and it would
appear that there was just the one family there. There were Jessons there
during the 1820s, and Jessons who migrated there from Long Clawson just before 1841.
What this analysis shows, though, is that the Thomas Jesson identified in each
of those 1830s burial register entries must have been the same one.

Where Next?

There are few records that might directly identify this
Jesson family because their short residence in Loughborough was pre-civil
registration and pre-census. Trade directories, military records, and (online)
criminal records shed no light on the subject. There was a census on 30 May
1831 but it consisted of numbers derived from church records and registers, and
used for population statistics.[45]

Given the tragic family situation, Thomas may have been
struggling, and may have received relief from the parish or a poor law union. Loughborough’s
poor law union came into existence on 9 Sep 1838,[46] and
the Leicestershire
Records Office online catalogue suggests records from 1837 (their ref.
G/7); however, they confirmed that there are few surviving poor law records
from this period, and that they could find no mention of a Thomas Jesson. Their
workhouse records only begin in 1913.

Although they appear to have been the only Jesson family in
Loughborough during those years, it is possible that a married female relative
of Thomas may have moved there with them. The FAN
Principle could be applied to family members of both Mary Bentley (origin
currently unknown) and Thomas in order to determine if they were in
Loughborough too.

Conclusion

Thomas and Mary were framework knitters back in the village
of Sapcote. When Thomas came to Nottingham, he remained a framework knitter in
1841 and 1851. On his death in 1855, he was a “stocking framework knitter”. His
son, James, also had the same profession, and many of James’s children were
associated with lace and general hosiery. This work was clearly an important
part of their life for several generations.

The village of Sapcote was not generally associated with
knitting, but the small town of Loughborough certainly was. I believe that Mary
had twins, Henry and Maria, in 1832, and that this forced the need to find more
productive work. Loughborough had organised support for this profession in
terms of sick societies, and possibly unions. Whether the twins were born just
before or just after their move is less important than the fact that extra
mouths would need to be fed. The absence of any baptisms for these children
supports a move from one parish to another having taken place around the same
time.

It would then seem that tragedy hit the family within a
couple of years with four members, beginning with Mary, dying in only 18
months. It is highly possible that some infectious agent took hold of their
household but I could find no mention of epidemics in the town. During the
period 1813–1830, 21% of Leicestershire deaths occurred in infants less than
one year old, and 34% in children less than four years old.[47]

Sometime between 1836 and 1841, Thomas and his surviving
son, James, moved a further 20 miles north to Nottingham, an industrialised
town that was renowned for knitting, hosiery, and the lace industry — it would
have been hard to remain in Loughborough after those events, and Nottingham was
booming. In Nottingham, he met Rebecca Burdett, a widow who was born and
married in Hinckley, just 5 miles from Sapcote, and where his own sister was
baptised.

The names Mary and
Rebecca both recur in later
generations, and James’s eldest daughter was named Mary, after his mother (see A
Rich French Actor).

An interesting aspect of this research is that it’s more
about history than lineage. Thomas and Rebecca were too old to have children;
William, Henry, and Maria all died as youngsters; and the family was only in
Loughborough for a relatively short period of time. No tree can capture this type
of history, or distinguish the known from the inferred. And DNA is of no help.

[13]The UK General Register
Office (GRO) is responsible for civil registrations of births, marriages, and
deaths (BMD) in England and Wales. It maintained quarterly paper-based indexes
of registrations from 1837 to 1983, and several databases of their
transcriptions exist, such as the popular FreeBMD. During 2016, the GRO
published wholly new indexes of births and deaths based on the previous work of
the abandoned DoVE
project. These newer indexes are formed from the registrations themselves
rather than being derivatives of the previous indexes.

[21]“Leicestershire:
Died”, Nottingham Review and General
Advertiser for the Midland Counties (10 Jul 1835): p.2, col.4; place not
given, preceding two entries occurred on the Monday and Tuesday in
Loughborough.

Entered genealogy in about 2004. Still heavily researching the history of all branches of my family (i.e. many different surnames). Working independently on a research project for a universal data model and source format for micro-history data (STEMMA, www.parallaxview.co/familyhistorydata). Former organising member of FHISO (http://fhiso.org/); currently Vice Chair.

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Although the views expressed here may draw strongly from the STEMMA private R&D project, they do not represent the views of FHISO of which I am associated. This is a personal blog by a genealogist who strives to record micro-history rather than either family history or a mere family tree.